Adaptations

What is adaptation?

  • An adaptation is a trait that makes an animal suited to its environment.
  • Animals and plants are adapted to the conditions of the habitats in which they live.
  • Every organism has certain features that helps it to ‘fit in’ with its surroundings

The best adaptations to hide away from predators

  • Adaptations can help animals in several ways.
  • e.g. camouflage
    it helps the animals to hunt and prevents predators of eating them

Adaptations for coping with temperature

  • Animals live everywhere on earth.
  • Animals can live in many different places in the world because they have special adaptations to the area they live in.

Plants adapt to a hot environment

Structural or behavioural adaptation

  • Animals of the Arctic have many adaptations to help them survive in often inhospitable climate.
  • Animals of the scorching hot desert have way to adapt to seek shelter.
  • Long vertical roots enabling a plant to reach water sources beneath the soil
  • Shallow and radial roots which extend horizontally and maximise water absorption at the surface
  • Small and narrow leaves which decrease heating from the sun
  • Rotating leaves which enable the plant to orientate its leaves away from maximum exposure to the sun
  • Recessed and reduced stomata which reduce water loss
  • Succulent leaves which reduce the surface-to-volume ratio, favour water conversation
  • Leaf polymorphism in which broad leaves are formed when soil moisture is high and narrow leaves follow when water is used up
  • Increased surface are which increases the rate of heat dissipation
  • Enhanced cuticle and a waxy covering which prevents water loss
  • Being able to move very quickly
  • Having strong claws
  • Having long, curved beaks
  • Having keen eyesight
  • Having the ability to trap prey
  • Having certain shapes or colours

Animals adapting to a cold ❄️environment

Migrate

Adapt

Hibernate

  • Some animals travel to other places where the weather is warmer or where they can find food
  • Some animals stay active in the cold 🥶 weather
  • They must adapt to the changing weather
  • They must make many changes to their behaviour or bodies
  • Some animals hibernate for part or all of the winter season ❄️

Animals adapting to a hot 🥵 environment

Avoiding heat

Dissipating heat

Retaining water 💧

Acquiring water 💦

  • Behavioural techniques for avoiding excess heat are numerous among desert animals
  • Certain species of birds breed during the relatively cool spring and then leave the area to a cooler place.
  • Some animals dissipate heat absorbed from their surroundings by various mechanisms.
  • The mechanisms some desert animals have evolved to retain water are even more elaborate.
  • Some retain water by burrowing in to moist soil during the dry daylight hours.
  • Some desert animals derive water directly from plants, particularly succulents ones, such as cactus

Adaptations to coping with light 💡

Animals adaptation to coping with 💡

  • To survive at night, animals had to find food in the dark. Some developed a highly advanced sense of smell or specialised hearing abilities such as echolocation. Others acquired eye adaptations for improved night vision.

Plant adaptation to 💡

  • Some plants live in a light-limited environment— light is very scarce or hard to come by. This is what occurs in most dense forests since very little light gets through the forest canopy.

Why plants climb

  • Climbers evolved from plants that pushed upwards through the forest or shrubby undergrowth towards the light to find their place in the Sun where few other plants can compete.

Adaptations for obtaining food and feeding

Food-getting mouth parts

  • Most meat eating animals are predators that hunt and kill other animals for food.
  • There are three of the main weapons on predators are sharp teeth, claws and jaws that they use to eat meat.